Reader, if you grow impatient at these quotations, these accounts, reflect, first, that perhaps you have not read my works and, next, that I can no longer hear you; I am sleeping in the ground on which you tread; if you be angry with me, stamp on the ground, you will insult only my bones. Reflect, moreover, that my writings form an essential part of that existence whose leaves I am unfolding. Ah, why had not my pictures of Naples a background of truth! Why was not the daughter of the Rhone[437] the real woman of my imaginary delights? But no; if I was Augustine, Jerome, Eudorus, I was all these alone; my days went before the days of the friend of Corinne in Italy. How happy should I have been could I have spread my whole life under her feet like a carpet of flowers! My life is rough and its unevenness hurts. May my dying hours at least reflect the tenderness and charm with which she has filled them upon her who was beloved by all and of whom none had ever to complain!
*
Murat, King of Naples.
Murat, King of Naples, born 25 March 1767, at the Bastide, near Cahors, was sent to Toulouse for his studies. He took a dislike to letters, enlisted in the Ardennes Chasseurs, deserted, and ran away to Paris. Admitted into Louis XVI.'s Constitutional Guard, he received, after the disbanding of that guard, a cornetcy in the 12th Regiment of Mounted Chasseurs. On the death of Robespierre, he was dismissed as a Terrorist[438]; the same thing happened to Bonaparte, and both soldiers were left without resources. Murat was restored to favour on the 13 Vendémiaire, and became aide-de-camp to Napoleon. He served under him in the early Italian campaigns, took the Valtellina and added it to the Cisalpine Republic[439]; he took part in the Egyptian Expedition and distinguished himself at the Battle of Abukir[440]. Returning to France with his master, he was ordered to turn out the Council of the Five Hundred[441]. Bonaparte gave him his sister Caroline in marriage[442]. Murat commanded the cavalry at the Battle of Marengo[443]. He was Governor of Paris at the time of the death of the Duc d'Enghien and bemoaned in secret a murder which he had not the courage to condemn aloud.
Brother-in-law to Napoleon, and a marshal of the Empire[444], Murat entered Vienna in 1805[445]; he contributed to the victories of Austerlitz[446], Jena[447], Eylau[448], and Friedland[449], became Grand-duke of Berg[450], and invaded Spain in 1808.
Napoleon recalled him and gave him the Crown of Naples. Proclaimed King of the Two Sicilies on the 1st of August 1808, he pleased the Neapolitans through his magnificence, his theatrical dress, his cavalcades and his entertainments.
Summoned in his capacity as a grand vassal of the Empire to the invasion of Russia, he reappeared in all the battles and found himself charged with the command of the retreat from Smolensk to Wilna[451]. After manifesting his discontent, he left the army, following Bonaparte's example, and went to warm himself in the sun of Naples, as did his captain at the fireside of the Tuileries. Those men of triumph could never accustom themselves to reverses. Then began his connexion with Austria. He appeared once more in the camps of Germany in 1813, returned to Naples after the loss of the Battle of Leipzig[452], and resumed his Austro-British negociations. Before entering into a complete alliance, Murat wrote Napoleon a letter which I have heard read by M. de Mosbourg[453]: he told his brother-in-law in this letter that he had found the Peninsula in a very agitated condition, that the Italians were demanding their national independence and that, if this were not restored to them, it was to be feared that they should join the European Coalition and thus increase the dangers of France. He besought Napoleon to make peace, as the only means of preserving so powerful and fine an empire. He added that, if Bonaparte refused to listen to him, he, Murat, abandoned at the further end of Italy, would find himself compelled to leave his kingdom or embrace the interests of Italian liberty. This very reasonable letter was left for several months unanswered; Napoleon was, therefore, not able to reproach Murat justly with having betrayed him.
Murat, obliged to make a quick choice, signed a treaty with the Court of Vienna on the 11th of January 1814; he bound himself to furnish the Allies with a corps of thirty thousand men. As the price of his defection, he was guaranteed his Kingdom of Naples, and his right of conquest over the Papal Marches. Madame Murat revealed this important transaction to Madame Récamier. At the moment when he was about to declare himself openly, Murat, very much excited, met Madame Récamier at Caroline's, and asked her what she thought of the decision which he had to take; he begged her to weigh well the interests of the people whose sovereign he had become. Madame Récamier said to him:
"You are a Frenchman and you must remain faithful to the French."